Tampa insurtech startup acquires $400M in premiums from defunct company

TAMPA — Slide, an insurtech startup that quickly raised $100 million in seed capital, has acquired $400 million worth of premiums from Orlando-based St. Johns Insurance Co., which recently ceased operations after a ratings agency downgraded it.

The move, according to a press release, makes Slide — founded by former Heritage Insurance Holdings CEO Bruce Lucas — one of the three largest insurtech companies in the country. It also ensures that St. Johns’ 150,000 policyholders in Florida and South Carolina enjoy uninterrupted coverage. St. Johns, which had been in business for 20 years, provided homeowners insurance, condo insurance and insurance for landlords.

Slide, in the release, says it used proprietary AI-powered technology to assess the St. Johns portfolio in record time, allowing it to quickly put a deal together.

“I have done a lot of very successful deals in my career, but I have never been able to process millions of data points at this speed,” Lucas states in ther release. “We processed $73.7 billion in annual TIV, multiple years of claims data, projected reinsurance costs and forward-modeled loss ratios in 48 hours. I don’t think there is another insurtech that could have analyzed and closed this complex transaction, let alone at this speed.” 

During his nine-year tenure at Heritage, which he founded, Lucas grew the company from startup to more than $1.1 billion in premiums in 15 states. The firm also turned a profit every year during that time.